Shikatanai wrote:Are we talking about groundbased game or in general? As Groundgame and Orbitgame are, besides destroying the key ships in Orbit, very much different parts of the game that do not overlap as much I was referring to groundgame for the most part. Orbit ships usually need some flexible play as opportunities occur or disappear but groundgame tend to split the map if there is not enough strikecraft. E.g. why would someone play around all 5 Take&Hold objectives with only 8 strikecraft - way more effective and more reliable to concentrate on 3 clusters - everything else will result in huge gambles and that's what you do not want competitively. I don't see this happening with 12+ because you have enough spare ships to also take some risks. Of course this mainly applies for competitive play but that's what I'm concerned about as casual games do not rely as much on balance and houserules are easy to install.

Honestly, I think that some of this is due to a difference in the way your group approaches the game. If I have 12 Strike carriers and my opponent only has 6, then yes I would challenge for all the sectors.

However, if I have 12 and my opponent has 12, then I'm probably going to split-map and just concentrate on winning more than my opponent. If I take the risk and split my SCs across all the sectors whilst my opponent concentrates all 12 of his around the clusters he needs to win, then I'm going to lose.

Stompzilla wrote:Honestly, I think that some of this is due to a difference in the way your group approaches the game. If I have 12 Strike carriers and my opponent only has 6, then yes I would challenge for all the sectors.

However, if I have 12 and my opponent has 12, then I'm probably going to split-map and just concentrate on winning more than my opponent. If I take the risk and split my SCs across all the sectors whilst my opponent concentrates all 12 of his around the clusters he needs to win, then I'm going to lose.

My experience differs from that. Imho it gets much more chesslike if you bring as much Strikecraft. As some of those Strikecarriers / Troopships will also get in later in the game compared to e.g. if you just bring 6-8 you can also react much better. In addition it is also not only about winning the game but also being able to outscoure the opponent as much as possible. With 12+ Strikecarriers it is much more possible to take some risks while seeing the developing of the groundgame (e.g. taking risks on a certain cluster because the rolls were onesided, you got a defence battery down etc.) while not falling too far behind.

It looks like per the Q&A posted to the FB group that Destroyers are just fitting into the space between frigates and cruisers and are going to need to go weapons free to get the most benefit. Nothing about firing into the atmosphere.

Shikatanai wrote:Are we talking about groundbased game or in general? As Groundgame and Orbitgame are, besides destroying the key ships in Orbit, very much different parts of the game that do not overlap as much I was referring to groundgame for the most part. Orbit ships usually need some flexible play as opportunities occur or disappear but groundgame tend to split the map if there is not enough strikecraft. E.g. why would someone play around all 5 Take&Hold objectives with only 8 strikecraft - way more effective and more reliable to concentrate on 3 clusters - everything else will result in huge gambles and that's what you do not want competitively. I don't see this happening with 12+ because you have enough spare ships to also take some risks. Of course this mainly applies for competitive play but that's what I'm concerned about as casual games do not rely as much on balance and houserules are easy to install.

Maybe I misunderstood you. WIth split-map I thought you meant that the different parts of the game did not interact much with each other so that for instance ships fighting over one cluster stayed there for most of the game and did not go to other clusters or only very rarely.

Shikatanai wrote:Can you elaborate on that? Sounds interesting but I have problems with missions that cannot be mirrored but are still symmetrical?! Not quite sure about balance...That's also one reason why I like dropfleet - it is, compared to other Tabletops very easy and still fun to built completely mirrored maps giving nobody an advantage.

Yes, I'll try.

Most missions in the book are mirrored over a line that can be drawn between the players entry points. Often it can also be mirrored on a lime drawn through the middle of the other line and perpendicular on said line (That is, the table is quartered and each part can be mirrored to the neighbour quarter).

You can draw those mirror lines elsewhere. Like from corner to corner. Basically you can do any deployment of points of interest (clusters, space stations, etc.) as long as, when measured from the deployment zone, each player has an equal distance to similar targets.

On of the scenarios we made ourselves we had entry points on adjacent corners (and 12" down both sides) and clusters, space stations, etc. where on the other side of the table. There were a single LSO between our entry points partially blocking LOS but did create a situation where you were racing side-by-side to the targets meaning you had a good chance to shoot at your opponent before he could reach the sectors. I think there is plenty of opportunity in varying the missions.

In WFB 8th edition there were a similar situation. People mostly played battle line but if you used all 6 scenarios in the book equally, some very good armies for battle line had a very hard time winning some of the other scenarios. I think some of the same effect is present in dropfleet.

That's exactly the approach where you can as well just skip the dropping game at all - with 6 Launching ships you will basicly have one cluster at max where you will fight... no reason to do anything else.In addition this moves balance a lot because of differentsurvivability of different strikecraft.